Drugs not genes cause birth defects in babies of epileptic women Sarah Boseley, health editor Guardian Thursday April 12, 2001 http://www.nejm.org/content/2001/0344/0015/1132.asp ~~~~~~~~~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4169237,00.html Birth defects in the babies of women who take medicine for epilepsy while they are pregnant are caused by the drugs and not by the epilepsy, according to new research reported in the US. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine today, claims that the idea that the genetic abnormalities which cause the epilepsy are then passed on to the foetus, is wrong. Lewis B Holmes and his colleagues from the paediatric service of Massachusetts general hospital, in Boston, say it is the medication which is to blame for the children's defects. Since the 1970s it has been recognised that women taking the drugs most frequently given to prevent epileptic fits, have a higher risk than usual of giving birth to babies with certain malformations, such as abnormalities of the face and fingers, and retarded growth. The Massachusetts team examined 316 babies born to women who had taken anticonvulsant drugs during pregnancy and 98 babies of women with a history of epilepsy who had not had the medication.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Standard anti-convulsant medications include Dilantin (phenytoin),
Tegretol (carbamazepine), phenobarbital and Depakote (divalorex
sodium). Most of these drugs are used in the treatment of psychiatric
disorders as well. Were they to be used by a pregnant women their
teratogenicbirth defect causingpotential would be the same, this
study tells us, as when used by women being treated for epilepsy--
convulsive disorders. Epilepsy is rarely familial, or certifiably,
genetic. Epilepsyconvulsive disorders, unlike psychiatric disorders,
are real diseases. Not a single psychiatric disorder is a real
disease. This being the case it can never be contended that the
psychiatric disorder itself poses a physical risk of any sort. This
being the case, we must ask if it is ever justifiable to have a normal
pregnant woman or any normal person on drugs bearing such real physical
risks. But this is the question presented with all psychiatric drugs
for all psychiatric diagnosesnone of them organic diseasesdespite the
lies of Surgeon General David Satcher and psychiatric/pharmaceutical
industry to the contrary]
They compared the babies with 508 other babies whose mothers did not have epilepsy and had not taken medication while pregnant. They found that the babies of women who had taken drugs for epilepsy had a much higher rate of birth defects - 20.6% of infants exposed to one drug, and 28% of infants exposed to two or more drugs in the womb. This figure compared with 8.5% of those having birth defects and mothers who had taken nothing.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
time after time the pharmaceutical industry via their bought and
paid for researchers of medical academia publish, short-term,
statistically insignificant, bogus studies, claiming that one and all of
their drugs are harmless for pregnant women and their embryos and
fetuses. They are shameless, caring not the rates of injury and death
as long as the public perception is that "their drugs are harmless for
pregnant women and their embryos and fetuses." Refer to leCarre his
warning about Big Pharma, and be warned that there is almost no such
thing as an independent, unbought physician who can get away with
telling you the truth.]
Women with epilepsy who had not taken drugs in pregnancy were no more likely to have a baby with birth defects than women who had no history of the disease. The research poses a big dilemma for women with epilepsy, as stopping the medication would put some women and their unborn babies at risk of damage from seizures. A spokeswoman for the British Epilepsy Association said it might not always occur to GPs to raise the issue with their female patients. "But it is really important for all women with epilepsy who are planning a family to go and seek specialist advice beforehand so that the medication can be looked at and then possibly changed," she said.